The Power of Thoughts

Whether you want to lose weight, deal with panic attacks, calm your anxiety or gain more confidence – in fact, whatever the issue, it’s rarely a lack of discipline or willpower that holds you back. Since the majority of issues are emotionally driven, you can safely assume that your inability to deal with them actually has very little to do with the issues themselves. These issues are the effect, not the cause of your problem. The fact that you find it so hard to control them is likely to be down to an unconscious emotional resistance you are putting up, whether or not you are aware of it consciously.

We think on two levels. One level exists in our unconscious minds, called Private Logic. The other is in the outside world, the conscious mind and runs on common sense, reason and logic. Quite often, unconscious thoughts impact on thoughts and habits without us understanding what they are and how they do it. It makes us feel out of control with our behaviour as though taken over in spite of our best intentions. These unconscious thoughts and habits can stem from different times in our lives, and are not relevant to our world today. But they are stubborn, and have formed habits.

We have powerful emotions from childhood which can last all through our lives. Every emotion we experience has its origins in a real situation, becoming part of our unique Field of Experience. But when these emotions come from our early years, by the time we are adults, the situations that provoked such feelings no longer have the same power. What happens to a child may not be likely to happen to an adult. However, the mind keeps this emotion as it always has - but now it is distorted out of proportion. What was a normal reaction for a child many years ago may well have taken on a dimension that is now totally unwarranted.

Everything you think or do, since the time you are born right up to the present day is logged in that vast computer which is the unconscious mind, and the thoughts you access and the thoughts you repress are determined by your Private Logic. This personal reasoning, unlike Common Sense, has no rational basis, and is formed from all the people and experiences that have influenced you in your life. This is called your Experiential Field. It begins to form when we are children, and accept unquestioningly all the information we are given by the most influential people in our life, such as parents, teachers, priests. All the attitudes and emotional reactions we take into our adult world tend to stem from all these early experiences. The emotions they are linked to are the emotions that colour our thoughts.

Childhood is an incredibly impressionable time. What happens then stays with us for life. Our parents become role models which is why we often repeat their behaviours, absorb their opinions. Since we all have such a unique life experience, we all start our thinking from very different places, with different perceptions of the same situation. If ten people witness an incident, the police may well have as many as ten different versions of what happened. The way we see ourselves may be very different from the way others see us. The way we see the world may be very different to the way the world sees us because we all start our thinking from different places, depending on our early lives.

It’s important not to underestimate the power of the unconscious mind. It contains a blueprint, created long ago and continually reinforced as each habit or pattern is repeated. Our unconscious mind controls the way we think from day to day and generally governs our emotions and the behaviour you want to stop comes from your unconscious mind. That makes its impact on you very powerful. The main difference between the conscious and unconscious is one gives directions and the other follows orders. When you find yourself stuck with a belief or habit that you really don’t want any more, you find your unconscious mind just carries on doing what it normally does and blocks your ability to switch it off.

This resistance it sets up produces a counter-intention, known as a Paradoxical Intention. No matter how strong your conscious determination is, your unconscious can resist and undermine your best efforts. If it were just in your conscious mind, you could stop right this minute. Emotions are the fuel that drives us and your unconscious mind runs on emotion. Logically or consciously, you may want to make changes, but on an emotional level your unconscious mind is programmed to block your intentions. It resists changes. Since the majority of issues are emotionally driven, you can safely assume that your inability to deal with them actually has very little to do with the issues themselves. The fact that you find it so hard to control them is because of this unconscious emotional resistance you are putting up, whether or not you are aware of it consciously.

Hypnotherapy accesses the unconscious mind and helps you to eliminate these old unwanted thoughts, limiting beliefs and behaviours which have been getting in your way and preventing you from moving forward. You know consciously, that whatever you experienced as a child cannot affect you in the same way now, because you are an adult. This is why these old ‘triggers’ need removing because it takes you right back to the age you were when it happened and you react as you did then. Hypnotherapy helps you focus on removing these conflicting messages so you can replace them with a new, positive reality, which is relevant to your life today.

You and only you are the true authority of yourself. No other person or has the ability or power to make you doubt yourself and make you accept anything less than exactly what is right for you. Your thoughts play a significant role in determining your happiness because whether they are happy or sad, thoughts determine how you feel. It is your thoughts which govern how you feel and your actions come from that feeling and you cannot have a feeling without a thought.

This how the sequence works: Thoughts – Feelings – Actions. You become what you think about. You may not be able to change a situation or change other people, but you can control your own thoughts. Thinking isn't something that happens to you. Thinking is something that you do. You may think you cannot control the content of your thoughts. What you can do however, is control the way you assess those thoughts. In fact, we all have the power to control our minds. Our minds need not control us.

Our thoughts are powerful enough to hold us back, but that same power can propel us forward to achieve all kinds of wonderful things. It's not what happens to you in life that matters. It's your interpretation of what happens that counts. For all these reasons, it’s important not to allow the past to encroach on the present, and give you cause for concern about your future. Practice acknowledging the present moment, enjoy those moments, because this day won’t come round again. Make each day precious. Whatever is going on in your life, use your thinking to enable you to make it the best day you possibly can.

Article written by Lulu Appleton, - London

HYPNOTHERAPY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

The combination of these two therapies produces one of the most powerful and dynamic techniques. When used together, they deliver the fastest, safest and most effective results. Hypnotherapy accesses your unconscious mind, and enables you to disconnect all the old thoughts and habits that hold you back. Psychotherapy helps... [read more]